It would not be March Madness without a coach's heart skipping a beat or two.

"Exactly," Boyle said.

What Boyle brings to the Buffaloes is priceless. His salary is $429,000, plus $200,000 in obtainable incentives from a contract extension approved last month in the hope Boyle will coach in Boulder at least through 2016.

"I'm pleased to partner with the Board of Regents and our central administration to be able to extend (Boyle) and to be agile in adjusting to the marketplace so he knows how much we respect and appreciate him," CU athletic director Mike Bohn said.

What Colorado gave Boyle was a token of appreciation. But it was no more than a token.

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Want to talk hoops with a man who can recognize greatness? His career has been a walking tour through the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Coaches that CU assistant Tom Abatemarco has spent time with in the locker room and on the practice court include Lefty Driesell of Maryland, Lou Carnesecca of St. John's, Rick Majerus of Utah and Jim Valvano of North Carolina State.

"Tad Boyle is as good a coach or better than any of them. I think he's going to be a star in the business," Abatemarco said earlier this week, when the Buffaloes crashed the Big Dance.

It was Boyle who made certain the Buffaloes kept their cool when a 22-4 run by UNLV threatened to wipe out a 20-point Colorado lead in the second half.

Boyle is asked to compete in the same conference with UCLA, a school so essential to college basketball that you couldn't write the sport's history without it. The Bruins pay coach Ben Howland a salary of more than $2 million per year.

Arizona coach Sean Miller, who gets annual bumps of $100,000 to a salary that is also in excess of $2 million, is considered a rising star in the game at age 43. But he's not quicker or smarter with an "X" or "O" than Boyle.

What CU pays Boyle seems reasonable and sensible, until you realize that the walls of college basketball arenas are papered in crazy money.

Boyle has roots in Colorado. He has a shot to seize control in a power vacuum that is Pacific-12 basketball.

In the late 1990s, a friend poured a round of beer from a pitcher and introduced a young basketball coach from Tulsa. No more than 25 minutes after the conversation, it was obvious this coach was going places. His commanded the room and drew in the listener with an easy confidence. That's coaching. His name was Bill Self, now at the helm of the storied Kansas program.

A year ago, after the Buffaloes gathered in the home of their coach only to watch in disbelief as the NCAA selection committee snubbed CU when bids were issued to the tournament field of 68, Boyle sat on a chair in his family room and fumed. But this was a controlled anger balanced by a scary determination not to let his team have its heart broken in 1,000 pieces again.

Right there, in one of the lower moments of his career, Boyle had the look of a man who refused to be defeated. And, for some reason, memories of meeting Self for the first time came rushing back. A great coach can command any situation, good or bad.

Fast forward to 2012, on the afternoon when Colorado upset the pecking order in the Pac-12 and wrecked the conventional way of ranking teams by ESPN's Jay Bilas by beating Arizona for the conference tournament crown. Back in Boulder, after highly touted CU recruit Josh Scott led Lewis-Palmer High School to the Class 4A state prep championship, he boldly declared that the Buffaloes were ready to go coast to coast and take on the nation from Duke to Gonzaga.

The Buffaloes wanted to go big time. Joining the Pac-12, however, is more expensive than changing the logo on school business cards.

Boyle is big time.

Any school from a power conference with a need to add muscle to its basketball program would be wise to consider Boyle for a coaching vacancy.

"I'm sure the marketplace will continue to be fluid and I'm confident we'll be proactive in looking out for a basketball enterprise that is doing so many great things for us," Bohn said.

To his credit, Bohn hired Boyle from Northern Colorado. The Buffaloes got greatness on the cheap.

But the question is: Will a school that has never truly valued basketball be willing to pay whatever it takes to build on greatness?

Not all kids who play baseball are uniformed with fancy script across their chests, traveling to $1,000 instructional camps and drilled how to properly hit the cut-off man. Some kids just play to play.